Monday, August 15, 2011

What can this be?

When we were little we used to watch Razzle Dazzle on TV. Bonus points to anyone who remembers who the host was. Hint: He's Canadian and he was married (maybe still is, for all we know) to Suzanne Somers. Every so often they'd show a hugely magnified picture of an everyday object and we'd be asked to identify it. Today, we're going to play a variation on that game......what can this red and white object be?

Give up? It's one leg of a Santa sleeper, of course.

We found the pattern here. Isn't it just the cutest thing? And we know just the cutie to wear it this Christmas. The only problem is getting the size right since we need to start knitting now and she's got this annoying habit of GROWING!! :) It's like trying to hit a moving target.

To make the project just a little bit more interesting, we want to use some yarn we have in our stash and it's not the same gauge AT ALL as the alpaca yarn the pattern calls for. Hmmmmm. This is going to call for some fancy footwork! For every school kid ....especially artsy kids.....who wonder what on earth the point is of mathematics when all they want to do is draw or paint or be creative.... we say this: Not a day goes by that we don't thank our lucky stars for math. We use geometry in quiltmaking when we design new blocks and we use basic arithmetic in knitting. Every day. We could not manage without them. Without a good background in math, a creative person would be doomed to forever follow someone else's pattern/design. And a creative person would soon go mad doing that.

So, here we are....we want to make this Santa sleeper and we want to make it from Knitpicks Crayon which we have in our stash. 100% cotton and soft, soft, soft. The colour we have is called RED. Not sure if it's available now because the only red on the site is now called Fiesta. RED is a real Christmas red so it's just what the doctor ordered. For the white fur trim, we found a furry novelty yarn at WalMart that's called Pipsqueak by Bernat.

The pattern comes with a schematic and that's what we used as a guide. After reading through and seeing how it's put together we just recalculated all our measurements using the results of our gauge swatch. Easy peasy. The novelty yarn is wildly different and required a couple of attempts to get the drape we liked. We're knitting it very loosely on larger needles (6mm) with only 28 stitches to start (instead of the 40 that you'd need with 2 strands of the alpaca the pattern calls for), increasing to 48 when we change to the red Crayon and 4mm needles. (We're aiming for the 12/18 month size.)

You can imagine how delighted we were to find that when we completed the first leg and slipped all the stitches onto waste yarn to wait for its mate, all the measurements corresponded to the schematic exactly!! We're on our way.

As well, we offer photographic proof that the sock is growing. We've finished the heel flap in the Eye of Partridge stitch and are now about to pick up stitches along each edge. We are weighing our skein of yarn obsessively hoping we'll have enough yarn for both socks. It would be a shame to have to rip back to shorten the leg. (And yes, we know that's why people like toe-up. We just happen to like the tubular cast-on.)

News Flash!! We are very excited to announce we're planning something special in the next few days..... a knit along! Stay tuned for the details.....especially if you've got a MAN on your Christmas list. Er, we mean, if you're knitting for a man this Christmas, that is .... not asking Santa for one. :)

2 comments:

We nerdy girls always knew that math was a good thing. Besides figuring out patterns, it was good in high school for getting hunky guys as lab partners. They figured if they partnered with me, they would pass science and avoid academic disqualification from the team. My girlfriends were so jealous!The answer to the quiz question is...Howard the Turtle (or do you mean Alan Hamel). Is there a prize for the correct answer?

Oh, my! I remember Razzle Dazzle, in Winnipeg, MB we saw the show each day at 4pm, which meant running like crazy home from school! In those days anything to do with after school was refered to as after 4, so it was a RUN home. and yes, the host was Alan Hamel...

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